Nancy and Eli
Nancy Shulins was the first woman special correspondent in the more than 150-year history of The Associated Press. Her in-depth features for AP earned two Pulitzer Prize nominations and a Clarion award, and are included in numerous anthologies and textbooks. Shulins has taught writing and coached other writers at newspapers from coast to coast. She is the author of two books, Every Day I Love You More (Just Not Today), and Come to the Table. She lives in Norwalk, CT, with her husband, a consultant.
Eli was born a chestnut foal with a white star and one white sock on a Thoroughbred farm in upstate New York on April 17, 1990. The son of Dixieland Brass and Sois Sage, he was given the unfortunate name True Tone. As a yearling, he received a nasty kick to the right front knee and an early lesson in body language that never quite took. He went to the track to fulfill his destiny as a Native Dancer foal, but he was unhappy there so his breeder brought him home. His life was fairly uneventful until the fall of 1996, when he traveled to Oakwood Farm in Connecticut, delivered by two men whom he dragged across the indoor ring on their stomachs. Oakwood’s trainer decided right then and there he was going back where he came from. Had her schedule allowed, that would’ve been the end of that. Instead, he hung around just long enough to get under my skin. And there he remains fifteen years later.
